2009-09-30

Your fingers start to burn after picking up a hot plate. Should you drop the plate or save your meal? New research suggests that it is your consciousness that resolves these dilemmas by serving as the brain's Wi-Fi network, mediating competing requests from different parts of the body. Published today in the journal Emotion, the study also explains why we are consciously aware of some conflicting urges but not others.

For the first time, physicists have experimentally demonstrated a four-qubit bound-entangled state - a peculiar form of entanglement that cannot be distilled (optimized) by the usual means. However, the scientists have found a novel method for distilling the entanglement by working with two qubits at a time. As the researchers explain, the special properties of bound entanglement could make it a useful quantum resource for new multiparty communication and secret sharing schemes, and the results could also contribute to a deeper understanding of the foundations of quantum mechanics.

Scientists in the United Kingdom are reporting an advance toward overcoming one of the key challenges in nanotechnology: Getting molecules to move quickly in a desired direction without help from outside forces. Their achievement has broad implications, the scientists say, raising the possibility of coaxing cells to move and grow in specific directions to treat diseases.

2009-09-27

Flasks, beakers, and hot plates may soon be a thing of the past in medicinal chemistry labs. Instead of handling a few experiments on a benchtop, scientists may simply pop a microchip into a computer and instantly run thousands of chemical reactions, with results -- literally shrinking the lab down to the size of a thumbnail.

2009-09-21

New research by MIT scientists suggests that carbon nanotubes -- tube-shaped molecules of pure carbon -- could be formed into tiny springs capable of storing as much energy, pound for pound, as state-of-the-art lithium-ion batteries, and potentially more durably and reliably.

2009-09-18

Researchers at the state-run Korea Institute of Science and Technology (KIST) said the new transistor uses not only the on-off state of electric current but also electrons' spinning directions -- clockwise and counter-clockwise -- to handle information. It consumes less energy than existing semiconductors and opens the way for no-booting computers.

2009-09-16

In many ways, black holes are science’s answer to science fiction. As strange as anything from a novelist’s imagination, black holes warp the fabric of spacetime and imprison light and matter in a gravitational death grip. Their bizarre properties make black holes ideal candidates for fictional villainy. But now black holes are up for a different role: heroes helping physicists assess the real-world existence of another science fiction favorite — hidden extra dimensions of space.

2009-09-14

Remember a little thing called the space-time continuum? Well what if the time part of the equation was literally running out? New evidence is suggesting that time is slowly disappearing from our universe, and will one day vanish completely. This radical new theory may explain a cosmological mystery that has baffled scientists for years.

2009-09-10

How do we discover new things? For scientists, observation and measurement are the main ways to extract information from Nature. Based on observations, scientists build models that, in turn, are used to make predictions about the future or the past. To the extent that the predictions are successful, scientists conclude that their models capture Nature’s organization. However, Nature does not reveal secrets easily - there is no way for observers to learn everything about a process, so some information always remains hidden from view; other kinds of information are present, but difficult to extract. In a recent study, researchers have investigated how to measure the degree of hidden information in a process (its “crypticity”) and, along the way, solved several puzzles involved in extracting, storing, and communicating information.

2009-09-09

While researchers have already demonstrated the building blocks for few-bit quantum computers, scaling these systems up to large quantum computers remains a challenge. One of the biggest problems is developing physical systems that can reliably store thousands of qubits, and enabling bits and pairs to be addressed individually for gate operations.

2009-09-08

Researchers from Portugal and Indonesia describe an approach to decision making based on computational logic that might one day give machines a sense of morality. Science fiction authors often use the concept of "evil" machines that attempt to take control of their world and to dominate humanity. Skynet in the "Terminator" stories and Arthur C Clarke's Hal from "2001: A Space Odyssey" are two of the most often cited examples.

2009-09-03

A primitive quantum computer that uses single particles of light (photons) whizzing through a silicon chip has performed its first mathematical calculation. This is the first time a calculation has been performed on a photonic chip and it is major step forward in the quest to realise a super-powerful quantum computer.

In this work the researchers, for the first time, attest that monopoles exist as emergent states of matter, i.e. they emerge from special arrangements of dipoles and are completely different from the constituents of the material. However, alongside this fundamental knowledge, Jonathan Morris explains the further meaning of the results: „We are writing about new, fundamental properties of matter. These properties are generally valid for materials with the same topology, that is for magnetic moments on the pyrochlore lattice. For the development of new technologies this can have big implications. Above all it signifies the first time fractionalisation in three dimensions is observed."